There are so many social media sites to be on these days that you could spend a large part of your working life managing and updating them, to the point where you don’t actually get much productive work done! Therefore it is essential to manage your social media presence effectively and efficiently.
Ideally your social media marketing plan should aim to achieve the following outcomes:
- Attract new clients via shared information and referrals on social media sites;
- Update existing clients on new information and changes in the law;
- Showcase your firm’s people and their expertise;
- Notify follows of new blog updates, articles and news from the firm.
According to last years’ statistics LinkedIn was the most popular social media site for the top 200 law firms in the UK with Twitter coming in at a close second. Facebook pages were more popular with smaller firms with the large firms using Facebook for Graduate pages which they deemed extremely important. Google+ had a high uptake across the top 200 firms but lower engagement. To read more about how the UK’s top 200 law firms utilise social media click here.
Every law firm should have a LinkedIn page, Facebook page, Twitter and Google+ account that they update regularly. There is a lot of advice on how often to post updates, personally I feel that if you are posting three to four updates a day to social media you just become white noise and your followers end up ignoring you because they feel bombarded. No one has the time to read all the online content relevant to them personally or their business every day. It is better to go for quality over quantity, aim to post good quality, interesting content three to four time a week.
Here are five ways your law practice can use social media to market for new clients and retain and engage existing ones.
- Put photos of your firm, staff and offices on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Youtube. Do not forget the power of videos or vlogs. By 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, according to Cisco. One in three Britons view at least one online video a week – that’s a weekly audience of more than 20 million people in the UK alone. Pictures tell a thousand words and if you showcase your business visually you are far more likely to attract new clients via your social media marketing.
- Create a group on LinkedIn to share content, post questions and answers, and network.
- Use Twitter and Google+ to notify followers when you have updated your blog or articles page.
- Share relevant content with others by retweeting tweets and sharing other people’s posts. The favour is likely to be returned which will increase the amount of people viewing your content.
- Make sure you are social! Respond to legitimate comments, thank people for following you and share good quality information. This will increase the chances of your followers sharing your content on their accounts.
Social media may seem intimidating but once you have a clear strategy in place you will start seeing the financial rewards of the time you invest in it.